The Air We Breathe

Glen Scrivener's new book, The Air We Breathe, carries an endorsement from the historian Tom Holland, and it's not difficult to see why.  Holland's book Dominion is never far in the background, with its argument that modern Western culture is only explicable as the result of Christian influence.  I reviewed Dominion previously; I expressed there some hesitation about how Christian apologists might (mis)appropriate Holland's thesis to argue that the impact of Christianity on the West has been uniformly positive and that all good things (and no bad things) stem from Christian influence.

I'm happy to say Glen has avoided this pitfall.

The essential argument of this book is simple: many of the values which we take for granted, which are so familiar as to be a part of 'the air we breathe' are not, in fact, universal values, but are firmly rooted in Christianity.  In particular, Glen traces the origins of our thinking about equality, compassion, consent (particularly in the arena of sexual relations), enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress - and shows how in each case our view of these things is decisively rooted in Christian teaching.  This is illustrated historically and philosophically, and rooted in the opening chapter ('The Night Before Christmas'), which shows how the values of the ancient, pre-Christian West differed so radically.

Take, for example, the chapter on equality.  Glen asks us to imagine the ancient philosopher Plato being brought onto a television chat show.  He's there to comment on the claim that 'some lives are worth more than others' - but of course "it is trivially obvious to the father of Western philosophy that lives are of unequal value".  He can't even understand the debate.  Of course women are worth less than men; of course slaves are worth less than freemen.  With ample quotations and examples, Glen demonstrates that the idea that all human beings are of equal worth depends on the Christian story, and only entered the world with the Christian gospel: "the God story and the equality story stand or fall together."

I said Glen avoids the pitfall of arguing too much.  What I mean is that he is clear that the church and Christian thinkers have not always been, so to speak, on the side of the angels.  In the chapter on science, for example, it is acknowledged that the church has in fact not always been a friend to the scientific project (although, as also noted there, the mutual hostility has been much exaggerated in the retelling over the centuries).  The chapter on Enlightenment is even clearer in this regard.  But the point is that where Christians have gone wrong, it is because they have not been true to their own deepest beliefs.  The resources, then, to correct those wanderings are also present in the Christian message, and in fact even when we judge them for going wrong it is Christian-inspired standards we are applying.

Where Glen is able to go furthest beyond Tom Holland (and I should say that the book is far from just being a re-hash of Dominion, however much influence there might be) is in asking the question: is the Christian story true?  In chapter 10, 'Choose Your Miracle', we are asked to consider not just whether Christianity has had a huge cultural impact; the previous chapters have demonstrated beyond a doubt that it has.  Here we are asked to consider whether the influence of the Christian story on the modern world is explained by the fact that the Christian story is true.  This chapter leads to a final appeal: to those who have no faith, to investigate the person of Jesus; to those who feel done with Christianity, to think twice before abandoning the church, despite its failings; to those who call themselves Christians, to lean hard into the weirdness of the Christian story, to understand and express how radical it really is.

I think this book is persuasive.  I find it more persuasive because in a sense it has properly limited aims: it just invites us once again to consider Jesus.  It shows clearly that we in the modern West are not done with him, even if we think we are.  It helps us to navigate our Christ-haunted culture, and asks gently whether it is not in fact the Risen Christ, rather than the ghost Christ, who explains it all best.

You can, and if I were you I would, pre-order it now.

The Good Book Company were kind enough to send me a free copy of The Air We Breathe.  They didn't commission or influence this review.

Standing on our own ground

There has been a bit of mostly good-natured debate amongst Christians around how churches ought to react to lockdown restrictions recently.  There are those who feel very strongly that churches should be open, and have lobbied for this; there are those who feel very strongly that churches should be acting for the common good and closing for the sake of public health.  I guess I've made it clear I'm with the former, but that's not what this particular post is about.  I want to make some wider observations about how we make these sorts of arguments and what that means for our engagement with the world.

A line which I've seen a number of variations on is this: 'of course, I believe that church services are more important than pubs or shops, but I don't expect the Government or society at large to agree with me'.  Sometimes this line comes from a place of resignation - we simply cannot expect people who do not acknowledge Christ to take Christian positions, so why bother?  But more often I think it is driven by strategy - it doesn't make sense, strategically, to advance arguments and positions which are so thoroughly grounded in a uniquely Christian perspective that they will simply be rejected out of hand by those who don't share that perspective.

Evidence that this strategy is being pursued can be found in the sorts of public presentations church leaders make.  In general, there is a great effort to persuade people that we are good for society - that we do a lot of social work, that we are essential to support people's spiritual and emotional health, and even that we contribute indirectly to the economy.  This is all a strategic effort to set out the worth of churches and Christianity in terms which the non-Christian world is more likely to understand and accept.

I have two concerns about this approach.  The first is that I think it is disingenuous.  The reason Christians value churches and Christianity is not because these things are beneficial to society.  We value Christianity because we think it is the absolute truth about the universe and the way of redemption.  We value church because here is the gathered community of the redeemed, here is the preached Word which gives us life, and here is the Table at which we feed on Christ.  I think we are in danger of presenting an untruth, or at least performing a bait and switch: trying to persuade society to let us meet or whatever on the grounds that we run food banks, and then when given freedom putting most of our efforts into preaching sermons.

The second, and deeper, concern is that we divide ourselves.  In general, people think they're just moving on to this ground - this perceived shared ground of common values - in order to make a strategic argument, whilst in our hearts maintaining the priority of Christian truth.  But I don't think we can internally stand on the ground of the gospel whilst externally occupying a different position for strategic reasons - or at least I don't think we can keep it up.  A stance taken up for reasons of strategic engagement is likely to become our ultimate stance before long.  It seems to me, for example, that we can trace the descent of someone like Steve Chalke into heresy from an initial commitment to a place of strategic engagement - certainly the first hint I saw of his declension revolved around changing our doctrine of sin to fit better with an understanding of human nature which played better in development circles.

I think we are better to stand on our own ground, even if it means not being understood; better to lose the argument than to lose our souls.  This is not an argument for obscurantism - we ought to try to translate and contextualise our message, but at the end of the day we still need to be sure that it still is our message.  In the public sphere, we ought not to be scrambling to occupy come sort of common ground; we ought to be saying with the Psalmist 'pay homage to the Son or he will be angry'.

Reasonable, because real

On Sunday I preached from the opening part of Acts 17, and amongst other things noted that Luke reports that the apostle Paul "reasoned", "explained", and "proved" the content of the Christian message in the synagogue.  A noble response to the message, according to Luke, was not so much to just take Paul's word for it, but to "examine the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so".  Because he was in the synagogue, Paul was able to make use of the Scriptures as an acknowledged authority, in a way that we mostly won't be able to do in our context, but the broader point I was making was this: the gospel is the sort of thing that can be discussed, argued over, reasoned.

To put it another way, the gospel is reasonable, because it is real.  Contemporary Western culture wants to put a hard border around a world of 'facts' which can be debated, and to put religious claims outside that border, in the world of 'opinions' and 'beliefs'.  Some people think they're doing religion a favour here - putting it outside the grubby world of argument and within a transcendent realm where you can hold your beliefs in a mystical way without being bothered.  Others think, more accurately, that they're defending the secular order against dangerous religion - it neuters religious opinion by making it the sort of thing which one can't really discuss.  Either way, the point is that religion may be a nice interpretive story that people tell themselves to find meaning in the world, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with truth (not, at least, the everyday sort of truth which concerns the way things are), and therefore can't be argued over, except in ways unrelated to truth: we can argue, for example, about whether religion is helpful or harmful, but not about whether it is real.

The whole Bible stands against this point of view.  Everything in the Christian faith stands or falls with the reality of Christ's resurrection, in history, at a particular place, in reality.  If Christ didn't rise, Christians are pitiable fools.  The book of Acts stresses again and again that the message proclaimed by the apostles has to do with public, accessible events: these things were not done in a corner.

If this is true, it is possible to argue, to reasonably engage in a demonstration of the truth of Christianity.  (I don't mean here the sort of Enlightenment reasoning, as if a person sat down with nothing but their intellect and the world around them ought to be able to arrive at Christian conclusions; I mean that given God's revelation in Christ in history, it is in principle possible to discuss the reality or otherwise of the Christian faith).

I argued on Sunday that there is one thing in particular that it is incumbent on Christians to know about: why do they believe that Jesus rose from the dead?  There are some good resources out there on this question.  N.T. Wright's big book on The Resurrection of the Son of God is the very best, in my opinion, setting the question in its historical context and showing that there really is no other plausible explanation.  Some of the arguments are summarised in the first part of his more popular level Surprised by Hope, which might be more manageable.  It doesn't seem to have got the attention it deserves, but Daniel Clark's little book Dead or Alive? is a helpful introductory presentation of the evidence for the resurrection set in the context of a gospel presentation, and would be a good one to have on hand to give away.  And of course there is still the classic Who Moved the Stone.

On the broader question of the rationality of faith, a good introductory run through many of the questions that people ask about Christianity can be found in But is it Real? and Why Trust the Bible? by Amy Orr-Ewing.  I continue to find the argument of C.S. Lewis in Miracles to be deeply convincing, though I'm aware it has its detractors.  The Reason for God by Tim Keller is excellent.  I would warn against many more philosophical works, for example those by William Lane Craig, not because there is nothing useful in them but because in my view they ultimately depend too little on God's revelation in Christ.

Have others found particular books (or other media; I'm aware that I don't really engage much with audio or video presentations, just because I like books better...) helpful in thinking through the rationality of faith?

The new modernism

It has been interesting to see the backlash against the Trump administrations presentation of 'alternative facts'.  Given the obviously propagandistic use of such 'facts', it is not at all surprising that people have been unhappy.  But the reaction has gone beyond this, to an outright repudiation of the postmodern project, and an assertion of some pretty old school values: truth is truth, and is clearly perceived.  Or as someone else has put it:

Liberals are now interestingly revealing themselves as unreconstructed positivists on the question of 'facts'.

— john milbank (@johnmilbank3) 24 January 2017

For those of us - say, orthodox Christians - who have been upholding the objectivity of truth for a long time, this is fairly ironic.  But it's not something I think we ought to be particularly cheering for.  Instead, I think this may be the time to spring to the defence of the genuine and valuable insights of postmodern epistemology.

For starters, we need to recognise that the current trend in liberal thinkers particularly is not in any sense a move in the direction of a Christian epistemology.  Rather, the move is back to an Enlightenment view of truth, which could basically be summarised like this: truth is available to anyone who makes right use of their reason and who is educated in the basic uninterpreted facts of the world.  This is the very foundation of the Enlightenment project: that we have access to the truth, and that the access which everyone has is basically the same.  This is the liberation which the Enlightenment declares from all mere authority: we don't need anyone to tell us the truth, because we can work it out for ourselves.  This is a million miles away from a Christian epistemology which recognises the fallen state of humanity, and the inherent limitations of the creature, and which looks to divine revelation for the ultimate truth.  Let's not get too excited about the apparent resurrection of objective truth: it's actually just Zombie Kant, staggering from his grave to once again trouble the world.

Then again, it is useful to realise that postmodern thinkers helpfully underlined the fact that we human beings have no access to uninterpreted facts.  Every 'fact' is part of a story, and carries different force if transplanted into a different story.  Seeing the world (as even Kant saw, if he didn't quite follow through on the insight) is an active thing, not a mere passive receptivity.  We Christians ought to hold on to this as both an essential part of epistemic humility, and as an apologetic.  Just because liberal thinkers seem to be suddenly convinced (in theory; in practice they have been convinced of this for many years) that their view of the world is the view of the world, self-evident to anyone who just thinks straight, we must point out that no view of the world except God's own view is straightforwardly true in that way.

The question to be asking of the new modernists is: what possible justification do you have for thinking that your view of the world is the right one?  What reason do you have to believe that you have access to objective, uninterpreted truth?  In other words: justify your belief.  And I will wager whatever you choose that this cannot be done without a leap of blind faith.  And perhaps a follow up question, which has a more positive spin: like you, I want to contest the anti-truth stance of the Trumps of this world.  May I not humbly suggest that this is the cause of God, and must be fought under his banner or not at all?

Problems with Van Til

I'm having to read a bit of Van Til, the Dutch-American Reformed apologist, and although I don't have the time (or, frankly, inclination) to enter into a proper detailed analysis of what I'm reading, here are a few thoughts which may or may not be of interest to someone.  Some of this would certainly apply to some other apologists I've read.

1.  Too much system, not enough story.  For Van Til, the history of Christ is part of the Christian theistic system.  I wonder whether the strong Calvinist emphasis on the priority of eternity over time (and note that in some form or other I would certainly want to endorse that priority!) means that there just isn't really space for narrative here?  All of history is implicitly just the outplaying of the pre-established system...  Anyway, the upshot is that we end up arguing over systems, and not reporting news.

2.  Too many straight lines, not enough cross.  I think that Van Til thinks that that if we just start in the right place, we can proceed by an orderly rational process to correct conclusions.  I'm not sure what the epistemological significance of the cross is for him.  If the height of God's self-revelation is the death of his Son, can we reliably draw any straight lines in our thinking?  The cross doesn't just contradict the world's wisdom. leaving thinking that is committed to the 'Christian theistic system' untouched and able to go on its merry way; it is a call for the constant crucifixion of all our systems.

3.  Too much fight, not enough victory.  I think related to the system/story thing.  Van Til talks a lot about the encounter between the Christian and non-Christian worldviews as a struggle of life and death, as a war without compromise.  I suppose if you have two static systems of thought, that might be so.  But we don't have a system of thought, we have a story, and the story is of God's victory over everything that opposes him.  It's as that story makes itself true in the experience of an individual that people will turn.

4.  Too much presupposing, not enough surprise.  Connected to the straight lines thing, I don't quite see how you can read the Bible and not see that God's salvation plan is a surprise!  It doesn't need people to first accept any set of presuppositions; the resurrection of Jesus bursts onto the scene and carries with it the power to communicate despite people's different intellectual starting points.

5.  Too much submission, not enough salvation.  I believe in the Lordship of Christ, but Van Til stresses submission to his Lordship as the first implicit step in thinking in any way that might qualify as rational.  To be honest, at points he sounds more Islamic than Christian - all about submission rather than salvation, Lordship rather than love.

I suppose I was never going to enjoy reading someone who once published a book called Christianity and Barthianism.  But at least now I've clarified for myself why I think he's so jolly awful.

Leap of faith?

The concept of the leap of faith is pretty central to the view of religion which most people hold in western culture today.  It can be given a positive or a negative spin.  Negatively, the leap of faith is portrayed as ignoring the facts, running contrary to the evidence, 'committing intellectual suicide', throwing oneself into the darkness even though the light of knowledge is shining all around.  On this view, a leap of faith means plunging into absurd mysticism, usually because one is unwilling to deal with the cold, hard facts of life.  Positively, the leap of faith is portrayed as reaching out for something 'beyond', something that transcends the mundane, something that provides meaning and purpose in a universe otherwise devoid of both.  Although the leap does take us beyond knowledge, per se, it is somehow a virtue to trust in something - almost anything - that will give our lives a bit of content - and who knows, maybe that something is really out there.

Christians tend to divide into those who hate the idea of a leap of faith and see no place for it in Christianity, and those who embrace it.  Broadly speaking, the former believe that Christianity is based on evidence and rationality, can be demonstrated, and does not involve any leaping because it is all within the bounds of what is ordinarily referred to as knowledge.  They tend to be keen on the discipline of apologetics, and to have some regard for natural theology.  The latter, on the other hand, do not believe that the arguments and evidences will get you all the way.  They may vary as to how far they will get you - perhaps very close - but at the end of the day, you will have to make a leap.  You will reach the end of your intellectual resources, and the arguments and evidences will take you to a point from which you just have to jump.  If God is there, presumably he'll catch you.

I would suggest, of course, that neither of these positions is quite right, mainly because they both have something desperately wrong in common.  Both believe that human beings can work it out, sort it out, and live it out, without assistance.  Either we have to think it through, or we have to jump.  Either way, the decisive action is ours, and comes on our side.

What if revelation were needed - personal revelation, God stooping down to meet me?  What if instead of the leap of faith we were presented with the 'leap of grace'?  What if it was all, in the end, about receiving?

"If we know ourselves, as the Christian does, we cannot think that we are capable of this leap.  And the whole idea of a leap that we have made or are making is best abandoned.  No one makes the leap.  As Christians, we are all borne on eagles' wings."

Questions (and answers?)

I've been mulling over the relationship between the Church and the world when it comes to questions and answers.  I think I see two models which dominate our thinking.

In the first model, the world is thought of as having questions, whilst the Church has answers.  The job of the Church, then, is to supply the answers to the questions the world is asking.  This assumes a few things.  Firstly, it assumes that the world is asking questions, and indeed not just any questions but the right questions.  Secondly, it assumes that the Church is in a position of superiority vis a vis the world, as the possessor of answers.  Thirdly, it assumes that the world, when seeking answers to its questions, is likely to come to the Church, or at least that the world will be willing to listen to the answers the Church provides.  I think this model may have been useful, at some point in the past, when the big questions being asked in the world were in fact largely shaped by the Church, and therefore the Church genuinely was seen as the place to go for answers.  I'm not at all sure it is very useful today.

In the second model, the world is thought of as having answers, while the Church has questions.  The job of the Church on this model is to question the assumptions of the world, and attempt to make the world think more deeply about the genuineness of its answers.  This model is probably more useful to us today, and underlies a lot of our apologetic strategy.  Note, however, that this still puts the Church into a position of definite superiority; our questions come from a place of security and power.

I've been wondering what an ecclesiology that is deeply shaped by the cross looks like.  I wonder whether in this instance it means not taking a position of authority.  I've been wondering whether the role of the Church in the world might be to ask questions of God and of itself, and to be asked questions by God, so that the Church is able to stand in solidarity with a confused world and encourage the world to ask the questions it hardly dares to ask for fear of a lack of answers.

I wonder whether we in the Church could be a community of comforted questioners, and the comforted questioned.  Might we not be able to say to the world: we too have questions and doubts, we too would like to ask God a thing or two, we too are confused and baffled by existence and terrified by non-existence, but we are comforted in the face of our questions and our fears by Jesus Christ, who asks the question with us - "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  And then we might be able to say to the world: like you, we find our very existence thrown in doubt, we are forced to question whether anything means anything, and indeed we find ourselves standing under the great question of whether our being can possibly be justified, but we are comforted in these questions by Jesus Christ, who asks us a bigger question which leads us to hope - "who do you say I am?"

Anyway, I was just wondering what that might be like.

The Nineteenth Century

I am just approaching the end of a term spent studying Protestant theology in Europe and America in the 19th Century.  It has been fascinating, but only in the way that a documentary about the Titanic or a train-wreck might be fascinating.  The 19th Century sees the complete marginalisation of orthodoxy within Protestant theology, and a move toward man as the measure of all things which is utterly destructive.  By the time we get to the First World War, we are faced with the terrible sight of German theologians enthusiastically supporting the Kaiser's war, and theologians across Europe not only failing to protest the war but actually talking it up as a war for Christianity and civilisation, as if these two were the same, as if they were both in desperate danger, and as if leaving the youth of the continent dying in the mud would save them.  And that was not a blip; it was the logical end point of the mainstream of theology over the previous century.

What went wrong?

Well, firstly, in the 18th century, theologians argued that Christianity was reasonable, and therefore ought to be believed.  That doesn't sound like the precursor to a disaster; the whole exercise was in fact considered as necessary to stave off disaster and to equip Christianity to survive the Enlightenment.  But at some point there was a switch.  Instead of arguing that the whole of Christianity was reasonable and therefore to be believed, suddenly theologians were arguing that only what was reasonable was to be believed, and therefore Christianity must be subjected to a critique that removes everything reason cannot accept.  This was, in many ways, just a frank acceptance that the 18th century apologetic project had failed.  This failure was not immediately obvious.  But as 'what can be rationally believed' gradually shifted, the ground upon which the 18th century theologians had taken their stand was eroded and eventually destroyed.  A bare kernel of 'Christianity' was left.

Secondly, theology failed to assert the transcendence and immanence of God.  Kant stressed the transcendence; Hegel in protest stressed the immanence.  The former made God inaccessible, and was not hugely attractive to theologians (although philosophers liked it); the latter seemed much more likely to provide theology with what it felt it needed - a plausible philosophical basis.  But for Hegel God was locked inside the system of the world, and especially human culture.  The logical development of his thought was the 'History of Religions school', which sought to trace the development of religion in history in order to see the revelation of God.  Protestant Christianity was seen as the highest point (absolute religion for the likes of Schleiermacher and Harnack; the best so far for Troeltsch).  In this movement, revelation came to be identified with cultural development.  It comes as no surprise that a theologian like Harnack, who wrote that Protestantism was the genius of the German national spirit, would ultimately fail to criticise the War.  (In fact, he signed a manifesto in support of it).

What do we have to learn?

Firstly, to be suspicious of our felt need to make Christianity rationally acceptable to those around us.  We could succeed in this apologetic task and still be putting down a time bomb in the church which will be devastating in a hundred years.  In particular, we need to remember that there is not some timeless standard of rationality to which we can appeal; what seems reasonable to someone today may not seem so reasonable in a few decades.  So we mustn't rely too much on the rationality of those around us.

Secondly, we need to be on our guard against moving with the times.  Revelation always stands over against culture and critiques it from its own place.  Whenever anyone discards a piece of Scriptural teaching on the grounds that it is old fashioned (and this happens often, under different guises), we need to ask whether the surrounding culture has been allowed to smother the voice of the apostles and prophets.

The gospel: a good idea?

Really interesting discussion going on over at Glen's blog. You should go read the original post, and the comments thread. Raises hard questions, like:

1. Is the gospel a worldview? I would argue that the gospel is the story of Jesus' life, death and resurrection - in other words, that the reason we call first four books of the NT 'gospels' is that this is what they are! In that sense, the gospel is not a worldview. I think that's important - a worldview is made up of lots of other things beside story (see The New Testament and the People of God, at length!), but it is the story of Jesus that constitutes the proclamation of good news. Only in a story - rather than a general discussion of what the world is like - can we hear about something that has been accomplished for us, by someone else.

2. Is the gospel logical? Can it be presented logically? I suppose I'd want to recast this question. A worldview can be logical or not, can be presented logically or not - a story is judged on different criteria, primarily (if it purports to be a story about history) the criterion of reference: did this actually happen? Still, the gospel story presupposes and entails a worldview, so can we talk about that being logical? I think the gospel-worldview is logical if and only if the gospel story is true. Therefore, I think we must take people to the story of Jesus rather than to the worldview if we are to make a convincing argument.

3. Can we do natural theology? Is there such a thing as general revelation? Nein. 'Nuff said.

4. Does this entail a 'super-spiritual' way of looking at the gospel? Does it mean the gospel is something totally different from every other message in the world? No, and yes. Not 'super-spiritual', but certainly God entering his creation is a unique event which cannot be compared to or ranked alongside anything else! So can we compare the gospel-worldview to another worldview? In one sense, yes: we can see what each has to say on different topics. But in another sense, no: we cannot, by comparison, work out which is more likely to be true. The truth of the gospel-worldview is dependent on the truth of the gospel story. And that cannot be received or believed without God opening blind eyes by the Spirit.

Unhappy Arguments

I've often heard used, and I'm afraid to say have sometimes used myself, arguments for Christianity which I now tend to regard as weak. Actually, weak is perhaps not the right word. They are strong arguments, but they are not fit for the purpose to which they are generally put. I have in mind arguments of this sort:

"Without Christianity, there is no purpose to anything"

"Unless there is a God, there can be no real ethics"

"All people need hope, and the only real hope comes through Jesus"

All three statements, and many others that could be made like them are, I think, true. I would still be happy to make them and to stand by them. The problem is where they fit into our argument. Let's take the statement about ethics. It is often used as if it could be formulated thus:

Major premise: only the existence of God could create objective ethics.

Minor premise: there is such a thing as objective ethics.

Conclusion: therefore, God exists.

Well, that won't do. Anyone can happily deny the minor premise. And they regularly do. Sure, you can push people into admitting that they do think that one thing or another is 'just wrong', but that is just their feeling or preference as far as they are concerned.

What about hope? I've often heard something a bit like:

Major premise: only Christianity offers ultimate hope for individuals and the cosmos.

Minor premise: we all need hope.

Conclusion: therefore, Christianity is true.

But that is not even a valid syllogism! It is a valid question whether our need for hope, especially in the face of death, is not in fact a product of our Christian heritage. Even if hope is a universal human desire - and I don't see how you could prove it - that doesn't show that it is a valid desire. I hope for many things that don't come to pass.

Arguments like these have their place. What they demonstrate, if presented properly, is that 'it would be nice if Christianity were true'. That sounds like a pretty weak conclusion, but actually I think it is one of the things that my contemporaries need to hear. Christianity is attractive; faith in Jesus makes sense of the world. These arguments are important because many people have already decided that Christianity is intellectually, ethically and aesthetically barren. We need to show them that it is not so. We also need to point out, by use of these sorts of arguments, that they ought not to be content to swallow the nonChristian worldview without careful thought - after all, it deprives you of hope, ethics etc. Maybe those things are illusory, in which case we'll have to do without, but you ought to at least check. In this way, positively and negatively,we win a hearing for the gospel.

That would be the first step. But that is as far as any of these arguments can take you. Even here, your argument needs to be qualified: if Christianity is true, there is also the reckoning with the wrath of God against sin, which is frankly unattractive. That tells me that even here these arguments cannot be allowed to control.

Everything hinges on this: is it true? By which we mean: did the man Jesus die and rise?

Story as Apologetic

This is not, of course, original to me, but I am just starting to really think about story as an apologetic, or perhaps apologetics constructed as narrative. There are potentially a few advantages over the more traditional 'argument-based' apologetics:

1. Stories appeal to whole people in ways that arguments don't. Where a philosophical argument hits the brain, a well-told story goes to head and heart at once. And this is no bad thing. I have heard people say that apologetics and evangelism must be done dispassionately, lest we seem to appeal to a person's emotions; we want people to believe, not just feel. There's something in that, but I would propose that there is such a thing as emotional truth as well as rational truth, and that it is only Kant (him again!) which prevents us from seeing the former as just as important as the latter.

2. Stories involve people. Arguments, for most people, are spectator sports, but you can't help being drawn in to a well-told story. That is valuable epistemologically. The Enlightenment worldview wants us to see the individual as isolated, surrounded by data which he or she can analyse. In reality, truth is not something outside us to be discerned and analysed - we live in truth, in the same way that we live in stories.

3. Stories bring a more subtle challenge. An argument for the historicity of the resurrection based on an analysis of the evidence has value, but a story of the early church and the way the first Christians lived and died has more value. Stories are not so confrontational, and thus win a hearing. But they do nevertheless challenge!

4. Stories join together. My personal story links into many bigger stories, all of which link into the gospel story. Testimony, apologetic, evangelism - much more closely related than we have often thought, I suspect. Of course, the Enlightenment worldview within which we operate privileges 'universal' stories - and in reaction, postmodernism favours the individual story. Might it not be a powerful apologetic in itself if we can show that there is a genuine joined-up story?

5. The gospel is a story. This is the most obvious one!

Apologetics

A break from Kant, although we'll be back to him at some point, to discuss apologetics. I'm going to assume you know what I mean by that, and that you have some familiarity with different types of apologetic strategies. If not, Wikipedia is a useful starting point.

A bit of autobiography: I have always been sceptical of a lot of apologetics. In my younger days, I wondered whether there was any point in it - shouldn't we just proclaim the gospel? Over my time at Uni, I moved to a more appreciative position. I began to see that reasoning and persuading went hand in hand with proclamation in the New Testament. As my thinking on the subject matured a little, I discovered presuppositionalist apologetics, and the semi-presup apologetic of Francis Schaeffer. All of this was very useful to me. I started to bash evidentialism in apologetics as a failure to understand the epistemological effects of sin. More recently, though, I've started to doubt the presup position. Mainly because it is so strong.

The thing about presuppositionalism is that it is an unassailable position. It is a closed circle position. On Christian presuppositions, Christianity is true and reasonable. On other presuppositions, not so. The strength of the position is that it does not expose the gospel to the twisted logic and arationality of unbelief. The presup apologist is clear that there is no neutral ground from which the truth claims of the gospel can be evaluated. And this is surely true - everyone brings their own worldview to the party.

But that doesn't seem to fit with the way God acts in history. He seems to make himself weaker than this - to base his claim to his people's loyalty on actual events in history. Think about the OT. How often do you get a phrase like "then you will know that I am the Lord"? Answer: quite often, directed both at Israel and at others (notably Pharaoh in the Exodus narrative). God stakes his reputation on contingent facts, and expects human beings to be able to discern from those facts that his reputation has been vindicated, regardless of their initial worldview. God exposes himself to the critique of a watching, sinful world - most notably in Christ.

Presup apologetics is too strong for the gospel. I think evidentialist apologetics is also too strong, for different reasons - it tries to make the evidence unambiguous, clear, solid. I always find it unconvincing. Too strong a claim is being made - did people find Jesus unambiguous, at the end of the day?

So am I retreating, setting the clock back to my 'apologetics = bad' days?

Well, no. Because I note that the answer of many in the no apologetics camp is to disengage, to stop trying to communicate, to just repeat the words of the Bible again and again until people are convinced. It is just as much a power play as sophisticated arguments of the apologists.

Is there an apologetics of the cross?

Postulating God

You could be forgiven for thinking that a person who spent as much time arguing against the theistic proofs as Kant did probably wasn't a firm believer in God. You would, however, be mistaken. Kant most certainly believed in God. His arguments for God rest primarily on morality.

It is worth beginning by stating that Kant believed very strongly in original sin, specifically in the corruption of every human nature. (He does not believe in original guilt, nor does he believe that this corruption is inherited - rather it is chosen in some way by the individual). He sees the evidence of original sin, which he defines as the adoption of a bad moral principle, in human behaviour. People act badly, therefore they must have chosen to pursue bad ends.

Despite this, human beings have a duty to be moral, indeed, perfectly virtuous. This is our moral end. (Incidentally, you cannot really argue for this; on Kant's view it is simply the case that we have a duty to be perfectly virtuous). As well as a moral end, human beings have a natural end, which is perfect happiness. Although the moral end and natural end belong together, and together constitute the highest good for human beings, Kant is clear that the moral end is more important than the natural end - it is better to be virtuous than happy. But the most important thing is that we cannot have a duty to be happy, whilst we do have a duty to be virtuous.

From this, Kant derives the concept of God, in three distinct ways:

1. I cannot have a duty to do what is impossible for me; moral perfection is impossible for me in this life; nevertheless, moral perfection is my duty; therefore there must be an afterlife in which I can continue my progress. (Thus the immortality of the soul is proved - not yet God, but God is very much connected with the concept of the soul).

2. The moral end and natural end of human beings belong together, viz. the good deserve to be happy; but it is often the case that the good are not happy and that the causal link between virtue and happiness is obscured; nevertheless, it is our duty to pursue a situation where the highest good (i.e. the correlation of virtue and happiness) obtains; this situation can only obtain if there is a just, omniscient, omnipotent God.

3. It is my duty to be morally perfect; but in fact I have an evil disposition due to my original choice of an evil principle; therefore, even in eternity I could only ever make progress - I could never actually be perfect; but I cannot have an impossible duty; therefore, there must be a God to make up the shortfall.

I have perhaps not stated those arguments in their most clear and impressive form. It isn't that important. The most important thing is that for Kant God is a concept to make morality work. In fact, in Religion within the bounds of mere reason, Kant is clear that an actual God may not be necessary - it is only necessary to recognise that the idea of God is possible. If God is possible, then there is hope of our duties being possible, and so we will not despair of them. God is a "practically necessary hypothesis", a "postulate of practical reason" - nothing more.

The grand weakness in all Kant's argument is simply put: Nietzsche. Even assuming the validity of Kant's arguments (and that is assuming a lot), there is still the fact that we must assume the duty to be moral. The arguments boil down to: morality only works with God; morality must work; therefore God. Nietzsche will categorically deny the minor premise - and where is God then for Kant?

I raise this because arguments like this are used regularly by Christian apologists - I have used them myself in the past. They are weak, extraordinarily weak. They may have had some subjective appeal in an age when people believed in objective morality, but I think the time has come to drop them. We can still point out that ethics only makes sense on Christian presuppositions, and this may be useful in getting others to re-examine their worldviews, but we need to understand that this in no way proves God, or even contributes a gram of evidence for his existence.